I just got a few more trades, including The Torch. I am a total sucker for Golden Age superheroes, and I've always liked the Mad Thinker, so I quite enjoyed it. I'm delighted that the original Human Torch is back. Was quite impressed that Alex Ross made the boring-est Invader interesting, actually. And since I loved the original Invaders title back when I was a kid, I am also looking forward to reading Invaders Now! when it comes out in trade.
But that's not what I'm here to write about today. No, I'm here to make an anal-retentive continuity complaint.
So, The Torch starts out with Tom Raymond (Toro) sitting on a roof staring at his wife Ann, who has remarried since his death--and, according to a piece of Invaders Now! 1 I saw online, has two kids with the new husband, with whom she is cuddling on the couch--what, these people never heard of curtains? Fair enough, he's got a right to be bitter about the situation. But she doesn't look particularly old in the picture. Which she probably should be, right?
Okay, granted that Toro had a life after the war. He retired and married. You'd think sometime in the 50s or early 60s considering that his reanimated form is pretty youthful. But he could be older than he looks--he's a mutant, for one thing, and for another his body apparently contains some of the same cells as the original Torch, and that could have an anti-aging effect. So maybe he didn't marry until years later. It's still been a good long time since he died (a matter of decades according to Invaders Now!, which means at least 20 years have passed since they were together, and presumably more since he seems so uncomfortable in the modern world--doesn't like the music, hasn't seen the movies, is kind of freaked out by the tech.
So this is probably just one of those things where the sliding scale isn't working. Isn't it?
